What is Biomedical Engineering?

Biomedical Engineering combines a knowledge of electronic, mechanical, chemical and materials-engineering, with the life sciences of medicine, biology and molecular biology. Biomedical devices:

• Support and enhance human life
• Help individuals to overcome physical disabilities
• Aid in delivering medical procedures
• Test and deliver data which improve health and safety.

The disciplines of Biomechanics and Bioengineering are rapidly expanding with developments in Biosensor Technology, Tissue Engineering and Nanotechnology.

Biomedical engineers work with doctors and medical scientists, researching and designing ways to improve health care and medical services. They may use microcomputers, lasers, and other materials to develop and improve medical research equipment that is used to diagnose health problems. They may be involved in the development of medical products and different types of equipment used to monitor and treat patients and in designing and improving equipment for disabled people.

A biomedical engineer working in a hospital, for example, may be responsible for the safe and effective operation of equipment such as monitoring, diagnostic, and therapeutic medical equipment ranging from catheters, CAT scanners, pacemakers and kidney machines. They may be involved in designing artificial joints and limbs and assisting the surgical team in fitting these to the patient.

Biomedical engineers also design and deliver technology to improve the quality of life of people with disabilities. For example, they may develop equipment to assist people who may have difficulty walking, communicating or carrying out simple daily tasks.

100 years old Hydro Power Plant

Year 1908, There isn’t yet a hint of the First World War and the followed it revolution. The economy of the Russian Empire is rising. The metallurgical plant in neighboring Satka city has already been working for 150 years and the Uralian part of the Trans-Siberian Railway has already been finished. In such favorable conditions, the aristocratic family of Mordvinovs decides to build a unique for those times enterprise – a power station and a plant in one bunch.

Imported bricks were only used in joints and window and door openings. It is convenient and extremely beautiful. This is, for example, the house of a mining engineer.

The power station and the plant were built parallel to each other. Three hydropower units, modern French electric arc furnaces… At that time, the construction of the HPP located somewhere in the Uralian backwoods was the peak of engineering.









Even now this old thing produces half a megawatt. For a simple comparison: an ordinary auto service with two large workshops for 5 cars each needs 8-10 kilowatts. It means that it can power about 50 services! As for the time when the HPP was in operation, it produced 1.3 MW. That was enough not only for the plant but also two neighboring villages.





englishrussia.com

5 Things for Computer Science Engineering Students..

What should students be really focusing on? Somebody asked me this question recently – Imagine students who are in 2nd or 3rd year of their degree course right now. They’ll spend a few years finishing college, and a few years just learning the ropes at their first job. So it will really be about 5 years before their career really starts. What will the software technology world be like at that time, and what are the skills that students can work on acquiring right now to ensure that they are well positioned to thrive?

Of course, 5 years is a long time, and to quote Neils Bohr, prediction is very difficult, especially about the future. Still I think some general trends are clear, and there are some other timeless skills that are worth looking at. Based on that I’m giving my list below.

But wait!

Let me not bias your thoughts. Before you read my list, skip to the comments section below, and put down your list. Then read my list and critique it again in the comments. Hopefully we can have a good discussion that will benefit students.

So, here’s my list of areas students need to be thinking about:

The next billion customers: The IT revolution has probably reached a billion people of the world so far. In the next 5 years, it will reach the next billion. These will be a very different set of people. Many of them will be illiterate – so you need to focus on non-text, non-English interfaces – video, animations, voice recognition. Search for “English Seekho” to get an idea of what I mean. Most won’t have money or electricity for computers, so mobile devices will rule – so you need to start playing with mobile platforms like Android. In general, search for the “the next billion” and you’ll find some interesting material put together by the likes of Nokia, and MIT giving you ideas on what to focus on.

Usability: As IT touches the lives of more and more people, less and less of them will be “computer savvy”, and less and less of them will view computing devices as something that needs to be learnt. Consequently, the products that will succeed, will be the ones that are easy to use. And making something easy to use is rather difficult. It is a sub-discipline of computer science, and there is a lot of theory, and a bunch of well-defined algorithms and practices you can use to make things easy to use. The whole area is called HCI (Human Computer Interaction), and UCD (User Centered Design) is a part of it. It’s an area that you must be familiar with.


Computer Science Fundamentals: This will never go out of fashion, and yes, when I look at students coming out of our colleges, this appears to be a rather neglected area. Far too much emphasis on specific programming languages, and specific “technologies” is a mistake. Whatever the future holds, you will be well served by knowing the basic theory of computer sciences. Learn data-structures and algorithms. If you don’t have a favourite data-structure, and an algorithm that you find beautiful, then your computer science education is incomplete. If, after seeing an algorithm, your first thought is not about the complexity of the algorithm (O(n), O(log n), etc.), then you need to hit your books again. If you’ve only learned Java and C#, and you don’t really understand pointers, heaps, stacks, you will sooner or later be at a disadvantage. Understand the basics. And while you’re at it, also learn mathematics and statistics.


Presentation skills: This is not a computer science skill, but this is one of the most important skills that computer science students are missing. You must treat presentation as equally important, or more important than your program, design, and algorithms. And you must spend as much time learning presentation (from books, in classes, and in practice) as you spent on programming languages, and computer science subjects. I’m sure you haven’t done that, hence this item in my list. You should know how to write well. Not just papers and documents, but much more importantly, emails, and blog posts, and facebook wall postings, and tweets. You must think about what the user/reader/client wants to know (instead of what you know and want to tell). And of course, you must know how to speak well. How to tell a story instead of listing some arcane facts about your work. How to leave out stuff that you find extremely interesting, but the listener doesn’t.


Economics: Scott Adams, the creator of Dilbert says: “When you have a working knowledge of economics, it’s like having a mild super power.” Basically, if you understand the fundamentals of economics, you can see and understand what drives people and technologies and success and failure a lot better than people who do not understand it. I hated the fact that I was made to study economics in IIT for my computer science course. It seemed like a complete waste of my time. Now, looking back, I think it was probably the most important course.

What do you think students should be focusing on?

punetech.com

Some Luxury Boats

People start to front luxury anymore ,One of the expanding industry is luxury boats . New companies are offering their services in luxury boat building. Especially in Russia demand for luxury boat is so growing.Nobody had any experience first, there were no luxury boats in Soviet Russia for 70 years . Some manufacturers who saw this lack ,copy their works from the Western industry, but some go their unique, Russian way, creating something looking not alike to any other, like this one made for one of the Siberian governors..

Roraima Mountain-Venezuela

Mount Roraima (also known as Roraima Tepui or Cerro Roraima in Spanish, and Monte Roraima in Portuguese), is the highest of the Pakaraima chain of tepui plateau in South America.First described by the English explorer Sir Walter Raleigh in 1596, its 31 km² summit area is defended by 400m (1,300 ft) tall cliffs on all sides. The mountain includes the triple border point of Venezuela, Brazil and Guyana.







Mount Roraima lies on the Guiana Shield in the southeastern corner of Venezuela's 30,000 km² Canaima National Park forming the highest peak of Guyana's Highland Range. The tabletop mountains of the park are considered some of the oldest geological formations on Earth, dating back to some two billion years ago in the Precambrian Era.

The highest point in Guyana and the highest point of the Brazilian state of Roraima both lie on the plateau, but Venezuela and Brazil have higher mountains. The triple border point is at 5°12'08N, 60°44'07W, but the mountain's highest point is Maverick Rock, 2,810 m, at the south end of the plateau and wholly within Venezuela.

Building better wind turbines

Wind power is one of the fastest-growing field of power generation in the world, with more capacity added onshore than coal and nuclear generation combined over the past four years. But to sustain high growth rate to the next years, the industry will have to start tapping offshore wind resources, creating a need for wind turbines that are larger, lower-maintenance, and deliver more power with less weight.Department of Energy funds companies developing superconducting "gearless" turbines.

To support research in this area, the U.S. Department of Energy has awarded $7.5 million to six projects, each aiming to develop advanced drivetrains for wind turbines up to 10 MW in size. Five of the projects use direct-drive, or gearless, drivetrain technology to increase reliability, and at least two use superconductivity technologies for increased efficiencies and lower weight.

Current designs can't be scaled up economically. Most of the more than 25,000 wind turbines deployed across the United States have a power rating of three megawatts or less and contain complex gearbox systems. The gearboxes match the slow speed of the turbine rotor (between 15 to 20 rotations per minute) to the 2,000 rotations per minute required by their generators. Higher speeds allow for more compact and less expensive generators, but conventional gearboxes—a complex interaction of wheels and bearings—need regular maintenance and are prone to failure, especially at higher speeds.

On land, where turbines are more accessible, gearbox maintenance issues can be tolerated. In rugged offshore environments, the cost of renting a barge and sending crews out to fix or maintain a wind-ravaged machine can be prohibitive. "A gearbox that isn't there is the most reliable gearbox," says Fort Felker, direct of the National Renewable Energy Laboratory's wind technology center.
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To increase reliability and reduce maintenance costs, a number of companies—among them Enercon and Siemens of Germany, France's Alstom and China's Goldwind Global—have developed direct-drive or "gearless" drivetrains. In such a setup, the rotor shaft is attached directly to the generator, and they both turn at the same speed. But this introduces a new challenge: increased weight.

To achieve the power output of a comparable gearbox-based system, a direct-drive system must have a larger internal diameter that increases the radius—and therefore the speed—at which its magnets rotate around coils to generate current. This also means greater reliance on increasingly costly rare-earth metals used to make permanent magnets.

Kiruba Haran, manager of the electric machines lab at GE Global Research, one recipient of the DOE funding, says direct-drive systems get disproportionately heavier as their power rating increases. A four-megawatt generator might weight 85 tons, but at eight megawatts, it would approach 200 tons.

www.technologyreview.com

Geneva motor show: Nissan's Esflow electric sports car unveiled

Although the Japanese manufacturer is still pushing its Leaf electric family car, it's showing a glimpse of the future at Geneva in the shape of the Esflow electric sports car

The two-seater coupe features an electric motor in each rear wheel, with its lithium-ion batteries mounted low for optimum weight distribution. Nissan claims 0-62mph in less than five seconds, with a range of about 150 miles.

It features an aluminium chassis incorporating a roll cage, clothed in a composite body. Because it has been designed from scratch as an electric car, the Esflow is packaged with the batteries along the axis of the front and rear wheels.

Weight saving has been a priority throughout its design. The seats are sculpted into the rear bulkhead of the car, negating the need for a traditional, heavy frame. This naturally means they don't move, but the car accommodates drivers of all sizes thanks to electrically adjustable steering wheel and pedal box.

Also on the stand is the Townpod concept, which develops ideas for an ultra-compact, two-seater urban electric car.

telegraph.co.uk

World's longest sea bridge opens in China

China has opened the world's longest cross-sea bridge - which stretches five miles further than the distance between Dover and Calais.

The Jiaozhou Bay bridge is 26.4 miles long and links China's eastern port city of Qingdao to the offshore island Huangdao.

The road bridge, which is 110ft wide and is the longest of its kind, cost nearly £1billion to build.

A bridge over misty waters: The immense £1billion structure which is supported by more than 5,000 pillars stretches for 24 miles along China's eastern port city of Qingdao to the offshore island Huangdao






Chinese TV reports said the bridge passed construction appraisals on Monday and it, along with an undersea tunnel, would be opened for traffic today.


It took four years to build the bridge, which is supported by more than 5,000 pillars across the bay, and it is almost three miles longer than the previous record-holder - the Lake Pontchartrain Causeway in Louisiana.


That structure features two bridges running side by side and is 23.87 miles long.

The three-way Qingdao Haiwan bridge is 174 times longer than London's Tower Bridge, spanning the River Thames, but cuts only 19 miles off the drive from Qingdao to Huangdao.

Two separate groups of workers have been building it from different ends of the structure since 2006.


After linking the two ends of the bridge on December 22, one engineer said: 'The computer models and calculations are all very well but you can't relax until the two sides are bolted together.


'Even a few centimetres out would have been a disaster.'

The engineering feat will only hold the record as the longest sea bridge for a few years - it will be beaten by another Chinese bridge in the next decade.

Last December officials announced workers had begun constructing a bridge to link southern Guangdong province with Hong Kong and Macau.

Set to be completed in 2016, officials said the £6.5billion bridge will span nearly 30 miles.

It will be designed to cope with earthquakes up to magnitude 8.0, strong typhoons and the impact of a 300,000 tonne vessel.


But both structures will still be dwarfed by the longest bridge in the world, also in China.

The Danyang-Kunshan Grand Bridge is an astonishing 102 miles in length.


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